Court rejects Oracle’s motion to dismiss Itanium suit

Hewlett-Packard Co. announced Monday that a court has rejected Oracle Corp.’s motion to dismiss a suit centered on Oracle’s decision to stop making software to support HP servers.

The suit dates back to June 2011, when HP sued Oracle over its Itanium microprocessor, which HP uses in many of its products. Last year, Oracle announced that it would no longer develop software for use with Itanium, after Intel Corp. reportedly indicated that it would abandon development of the chip in favor of its x86 Xeon microprocessor. Intel later denied these claims.

In its lawsuit, HP says Oracle breached its contractual commitment to support its software running on Itanium microprocessors. HP also accused Oracle of engaging in unfair competition by trying to force Itanium customers to switch to inferior servers that don’t require the software. Oracle denied these claims, refused to settle and moved to dismiss the suit, which a court rejected yesterday.

“HP is pleased that the Court ruled that the language in the HP/Oracle agreement can be interpreted to require Oracle to continue porting its software products to the HP Integrity platform, as Oracle did for years before the agreement. As the ruling states, Oracle's interpretation would make the agreement 'illusory' and 'should be rejected,” HP said in a statement.